Weaver says the working-class part of him feels at home in Taiwan. "He just talks about loving being there and bringing the poets to the United States," says Camille Phillips, an artist and friend who taught ceramics in Kaohsiung two decades ago. "He found a soul mate among the people of Taiwan."
Last month at Weaver's graduate seminar, the topic was Passing, a novel whose main characters are light-skinned black women. One "passes" as white, deceiving even her white husband.
Weaver's always handing out extra readings. Among today's: "An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves, South Carolina;" copies of laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read; an English traveler's account of a slave auction; a women's rights declaration. For his students, reading American literature without this context would be like an American tackling Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) without understanding some Buddhism.
Also among the extra texts are two on how America's "model minority myth" - based on the successes of highly educated recent immigrants - obscures historical and ongoing discrimination against Asians. In one a Korean-American lawyer laments that he's treated like an alien despite his citizenship.
This comes as a surprise to his Taiwanese students, who thought racism was only a problem for blacks. Weaver tells them that in the US that they will have two choices: They can identify with whiteness and privilege, or they can identify with color and struggle. "I don't want my students to think that I don't like white people. My intent is to give information, to transmit knowledge," he says. "I have white colleagues who are anti-racism workers and they're very serious about their work. I want [my students] to know all of these things. It's complicated. I don't want them to be shocked when they go to America."
Weaver likes Taiwan because "people genuinely appreciate if you're a nice person" and "it's a break" from America's web of racial relationships. "I feel freer to talk about it without feeling the need to be overly critical. I don't feel like I have the black culture police on one shoulder and the white conservatives on the other. It's a chance to let go of some of that stuff, at least temporarily."
"I like the culture and I'm really grateful for the health benefits," he says. "When I come here to Taiwan I feel like I'm giving something back."
Afaa Weaver's 10th book, The Plum Flower Dance, will be published this fall by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He's currently organizing the second "Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference," which will take place next year at the Boston-area women's college where he's a professor.
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